Enfo's Journey to Modern IT Service Provider (MSP)

Pasi Nikkanen: Welcome to HappyToday podcast. This is a podcast for those who want to improve Service Experience of internal services. If you use ServiceNow or other enterprise service management system, then this is for you. In this episode.

Minna Nousiainen: With this tool and these discussions, we are on the same side of the table with the customer. We are not a Service Provider and customer buying it, but we can see that there are impacts of both of our actions here.

Niku Yliluoma: Hi, my name is Niku Yliluoma, I'm a customer happiness officer at HappySignals and today I'm talking here about Enfo's journey towards becoming a modern Service Provider with Minna Nousiainen who's heading Service Center Services at Enfo. Welcome, Minna, and maybe you can say a few words about yourself and what Enfo does.

Minna Nousiainen: Thank you, naturally it's a pleasure to be here talking about this, and as of Enfo, we are IT Service Provider, we've been here in Finland now over 50 years, so with some kind of experience of doing that. My background of heading currently Service Center Services or services provided from a service center, I've been in the industry for almost 20 years, so I have some background to these services too, around here.

Niku Yliluoma: So you're on a journey of becoming a modern Service Provider and I would like to know why, how and when did you start this journey and how did you go forward?

Minna Nousiainen: Well, that's quite an interesting question, when the journey started. I'm not quite precise about that, but when we started, we started measuring customer experience in 2012, I would say when we started with ServiceNow here in Finland. Then we made an own ticket survey with that tool, so I would say that we started measuring, and the importance of measuring customer's satisfaction or end-users satisfaction race back then. Of course, the tooling and the whole process was totally different that we have today.

Niku Yliluoma: When did you take HappySignals into use and what were the reasons for that?

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, well we started with HappySignals in April 2018 so last year was actually our first full year of collecting data and using the system. The reasons for choosing HappySignals was first of all, the importance of end-user satisfaction or the feedback was raised to totally another level because we wanted to really know what is going on with our customers or end-users. We kind of recognized that we need a new tool, it wasn't enough the way we were doing that. Then HappySignals was around and a few of our people had seen and heard about it and they came to me that, "Hey, could we look at this tool?"

Minna Nousiainen: The benefits from HappySignals at that point were that the previous one was made by ourselves, so it was quite much easier for us to start working with HappySignals because we didn't need to put our own efforts on developing the survey itself and so on. The main things were the importance of collecting the data and then the easiness with the tooling.

Niku Yliluoma: Yes, analyzing the data and finding the-

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, well that came later, the analyzed data. I would say that's what we are doing today but not from the start. Of course, we knew what HappySignals can provide us then, like shortly, but the main focus then was just to change the tooling, get more feedback, get better feedback, more written and perhaps more comprehensive view to our customers. Those were the initial reasons.

Niku Yliluoma: Okay, and in general, what does service experience or satisfaction mean to Enfo? Is that somewhere in your core or how do you want to see it?

Minna Nousiainen: I would say, and I want to see it as a core of our doing, but we are measuring actually customer satisfaction on three different levels. We've been doing this for a couple of years now and we have a special forum for handling all the feedback. It's highlighted and actually it's also lifted to one of our business goals, so we are following this in our management, too, so it is really an important part of our doing.

Minna Nousiainen: The way we made the change, because this has been and is still a cultural change for us, to move from a technology driven company to this, like emphasizing on the customer and the end user satisfaction. The thing is that we have tried to cover all of our teams, all of our parts, all of our processes with this, and our vendors, too, so not only internally.

Niku Yliluoma: You mentioned a forum, who is part of that forum? What kind of group is it?

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, it's our internal group currently, much is, it's led by our sales director currently and responsible for kind of the overall customer satisfaction. We have four members in the forum and we have meetings, one in each quarter, so four times a year. In each meeting we are collecting and reviewing the data from all our measurements and processes and following the steps, the actions we are doing based on that data.

Niku Yliluoma: Okay, so it's used quite widely then, across different business areas.

Minna Nousiainen: Yes.

Niku Yliluoma: There's a lot of talk about XLAs, experience level agreements on the market nowadays. Are you there yet or have you talked about experience level measuring agreements even?

Minna Nousiainen: Well, not in that wording I would say, but we are there, definitely. Customer experience is one of the main measurements we have in our agreements even today, but it's only one of them, there are so many of other measurements too, so I'm a bit worried about that position, I would like it to be much more highlighted.

Niku Yliluoma: Have you, on this journey, seen improvements? What kind of improvements, maybe together with your customers, have you seen by focusing on the service experiences and the satisfaction measuring?

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, definitely, improvements on many levels, first of all we have a process of handling all the negative feedbacks, meaning from zero to six. All written negative feedbacks are handled and they are mostly handled by a Service Desk agent, and the agent has a kind of obligation to implement the need for change in process or any network.

Niku Yliluoma: So they can't just forget it.

Minna Nousiainen: No, they can't, and those are followed, that they will come into action. Very minor improvements are made daily, I would say.

Niku Yliluoma: Okay, sounds good.

Minna Nousiainen: Everything's going forward with that sense. Of course, then on a greater level we are following this and then when we begin more to the data for example, now we are concentrating on separating requests and incidents, and we saw an instant impact, when we highlighted that we saw that the incidents were kind of suffering a bit, so our customers were not that satisfied like with the requests. We highlighted only the incidents and showed only incident happiness score to our people, and that started to change the whole trend.

Niku Yliluoma: You were able to do that with the HappySignals analytics?

Minna Nousiainen: Yes.

Niku Yliluoma: Okay, sounds good. Have you come across any challenges with this approach, with the use of HappySignals or the use of experience data in general?

Minna Nousiainen: Well, I would say the main challenges come from the other parts than with the ones HappySignals. For example, one discussion we have had in our organization is that since we have covering all teams and all personnel, we have had these discussions, in that is it fair to measure a person like the last one on the chain when the chain might be very long and the customer is actually not satisfied with the length of services, it has taken too much and so on? Then the last one actually resolving it, doing the good job gets the bad grade and so on.

That's one part of the discussion we have had with our personnel, so I wouldn't call them challenges. I would call them parts of the journey or needed to go and cover. When you open everything up like this, it's totally transparent to our customers and to our personnel, so we really need to have these discussions aloud.

Niku Yliluoma: I assume that the important thing here is to look for the bigger picture, not only the one ticket and how that's been handled, but where in many places you can make improvements.

Minna Nousiainen: Exactly, yes, definitely.

Niku Yliluoma: Yes, so you already mentioned the forum and you are looking at the data a lot. How is it practically, do the Service Desk personnel see the data and do you share it with your customers as well?

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, both of those, we share all the data. Well, it depends how we handle it, but we can share the whole data with our customers. That's a big part of our monthly reviews or quarterly reviews with our customers, so we are following this.

Niku Yliluoma: Okay, that must be a big change for the transparency and actually moving towards a different way of working.

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, it is, and of course it's like something that when you give something, customers want more, "Can you give us more?" Now, for example, the very starting point, that one happiness index, then I can show you the request and incidents, I can show you this divided to different...

Niku Yliluoma: Is that a good thing?

Minna Nousiainen: That is a good thing, I would say, because that is the possibility we have now to dig in more detailed in the data and see where the parts really are, because when you only measure the whole thing, you have the one number, which is good, in general, but that doesn't tell you where the problems are, so that you can-

Niku Yliluoma: Maybe when the customer sees the data as well, maybe they can give you sort of ideas of how you could improve even the things you might not see without them, the customer.

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, definitely, and one of the things I like, I would say the most, is that usually with this tool and these discussions, we are on the same side of the table with the customer. We are not a Service Provider and customer buying it, but we can see that, there are impacts of both of our actions here, so we need to do something together, and that's the most valuable thing there.

Niku Yliluoma: Yes, sounds really good. Okay, has this had any other effects? Like with your own personnel, do you see a correlation between when the happiness score goes up, is your own personnel also happier?

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, in general they are, usually there are correlations between the workload and the happiness index for example, and then when the workload is very, very heavy then the employees are usually quite frustrated, too. That's easy to follow, but then it's not like I can say point and arrow to point from one to another, like straightforward because the happiness index and the feedback is so personal, and it's from the end-user side and end-users don't know what we are dealing on our side, so they are kind of their own correlation between that. It's also reflecting the customer side, what is happening at the customer.

Niku Yliluoma: Of course, yes.

Minna Nousiainen: That's an interesting part.

Niku Yliluoma: Yes, I think I've heard from other customers that they've been able to predict things that, "Okay, there's a holiday season coming" and they've seen that the happiness score drops during the holiday season and they've been able to sort of before this happens, they can do something like put a little bit more people into solving tickets and so on. Have you done anything like this?

Minna Nousiainen: Well, yes we have. Naturally, I would say it's based on the happiness index, is forming another trend that we follow. Of course, we follow our volumes and look back to history data and make the operational modifications to our staff, but yes, supporting that too.

Niku Yliluoma:
What would happen if one day you wouldn't have this data? It disappeared, you came to work this Monday and didn't have it?

Minna Nousiainen: There wouldn't be any. I would say I would be quite blind today if there wouldn't be anything, so quite a loss, I would say right now, because this has been so long one of our major tools, even though now, for a couple of years with HappySignals, so definitely we would need to do something, and not only for us, our customers are used to this also, so they would be questioning it, that what are we doing now and so on. I would say that I would be pretty much in trouble if that would happen.

Niku Yliluoma: Yes, let's hope that won't happen, let's improve it and make it even better for you.

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, please.

Niku Yliluoma: Yes, so you're quite far actually with the journey now even though you have only been there for a couple of years with HappySignals, of course before you started already with that, but what's your next step? What kind of plans do you have for the future?

Minna Nousiainen: Well, continuous plans that we have with this tool too. I would say that we have now successfully implemented it, the main idea into our organization, we still need to continue here. As mentioned previously, we are still as an IT company, we are too much technology driven, we need to change our focus more to the end-users and to the processes. I definitely know that we can use the HappySignals data more comprehensive and more widely to meet this need, and that's what we are doing right now.

We are digging into that data, making sure that the data is correct and directing us the right way and lifting up some certain parts that we need to pay attention or focus there. One good thing here I would say is that we are now in a way, even though our customers seem to be quite satisfied to us, which is nice, we are not satisfied to us.

Niku Yliluoma: That's a good thing.

Minna Nousiainen: We need to continue improving all the time, so something like that we are not just saying that, "Hey our happiness score is on a good level, we don't need to do anything" that's quite contrary. We are digging and digging the parts or the areas where we can do different-

Niku Yliluoma: As they say, satisfaction stops development, you have very good scores and it's really good that you are still aiming higher and going for the improvements on small areas.

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, and it helps that we have the benchmark there, like raising us though.

Niku Yliluoma: Yes, it's going up as well all the time.

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, it is, and that's a good thing. I like the whole industry's changing and the whole thing is changing, but then we set our own target levels higher and higher, so that's something.

Niku Yliluoma: Yes, we spoke earlier about the maturity level that you are along. You had some idea of where you are on a scale from one to five.

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, I would say we are somewhere in 3.5 or something.

Niku Yliluoma: Yes, so there's room for improvement, but pretty good, I would say.

Minna Nousiainen: Yes.

Niku Yliluoma: It's a long journey, the culture doesn't change overnight.

Minna Nousiainen: No.

Niku Yliluoma: Okay, are there some groups of teams or some areas where you would need some more motivating, some help from us maybe where you could improve even more, or is it the general thing?

Minna Nousiainen: Well, I think one area we've been already discussing is the answering right. A big challenge we are having right now, so how to activate our end-users to give more feedback, not being satisfied there either, so getting more and more of the feedback that we need because it's so valuable. One thing here is that what we are building together, like at the same time when we are improving the methods of collecting the feedback is the return way, so how do we return the feedback, the value that they have given to us, how can we give them something back?

Niku Yliluoma: Yes and also show that, so that motivates also to give more.

Minna Nousiainen: Yes, exactly, so that's something that we are now progressing more with our customers, that we need to tell them what we have done based on their feedback and how has it improved our way of doing.

Niku Yliluoma: Okay, yes, so more volumes gives, of course, more feedback, better content for you, that's one way to improve, but I think you're pretty well on the journey and got far in a short time, so I wish you luck in the future as well, and let's continue our cooperation.

Minna Nousiainen: Thank you.

Niku Yliluoma: Thank you Minna, for the discussion, it was very interesting.

Minna Nousiainen: Thank you, it was nice to be here, thank you.